


maybe everything that dies, some day comes back

by kattyshack



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (MAYBE?? a little??), (but just in case:), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, F/M, Falling In Love, Memories, Resurrected Jon Snow, Romance, Secret Identity, bc it's ME and i will stand for NOTHING LESS, drabble...ish - Freeform, implied happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-21 02:39:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14906771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattyshack/pseuds/kattyshack
Summary: Following his resurrection, Jon leads a retinue of men to gather supplies and new recruits where they can find them. He doesn’t expect to find anything else along the way — that is, until they reach the Vale, where the echoes of harp strings can be heard in the middle of the night, and a bastard girl in the Eyrie strikes a chord within Jon he thought to be long vanished.(title from “atlantic city,” by bruce springsteen)





	maybe everything that dies, some day comes back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Queenofthebees](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queenofthebees/gifts), [soapieturner](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soapieturner/gifts).



> a/n: there was some tumblr talk about how sansa canonically plays the high harp, but it’s not a regular feature in fanwork (@captainbee89, that’s why this one’s for you; and also for mandy, bc it’s another springsteen). so this got stuck in my head and i couldn’t shake it ‘til i wrote it. it’s not much in the way of plot, just something i had to do; so while i acknowledge any and all narrative consistencies, i don’t particularly care about them and it’s all IN THE NAME OF LOVE okay so enjoy!

When he died, Jon had seen nothing in the after; but now, alive once more, a ghost walks beside him.

He had seen many things since his departure from Winterfell so many moons — nay, an entire lifetime — ago: wondrous and terrible and _magic_ , he thinks he may very well have seen them all.

But this ghost that glides so gracefully along with him, matching his own forceful stride with an elegant _swish!_ of skirts upon the stone floor, she is something he had never thought to see again.

Though she will not admit to ever having seen him before at all.

 _“Might I have your name, my lady?”_ he had asked upon his arrival a fortnight ago, with her hand in his. His forefinger had swept the pulse in her wrist, and he had felt it jump.

 _“I am no lady, ser,”_ she had said, so assuredly that Jon almost believed her. _“I am called Alayne.”_

Aye, that is what she’s called — Jon could not pretend otherwise — but it is not who she _is_.

Perhaps the way that his half-cold heart has thawed in her company, perhaps the way it hammers and skips in her presence, should make Jon wish that she were no one else. Only Alayne Stone, a bastard girl always, never a lady, nor the eldest surviving heir to the North.

_Winterfell belongs to my sister Sansa…_

But that same heart knows, without question, and yet it calls to her all the same. And Jon has long given up on what is right and what is wrong; things simply _are_. He will take what joys this world, this life, has to offer him. No gods had come to judge him in his first death, so what has he to fear now?

 _Nothing_ , he thinks, and casts a look to the silhouette that walks beside him, illuminated by the moonlight pouring through the high windows of the Eyrie. _But I could have her._

“This way.” Jon’s words break the silence between them. He tilts his head to the left. “I heard it just the other night.”

 _Every night._ The strings of a harp, well past the high moon, harmonies that float through the still corridors, that carry out to the mountains beyond and hang in the midnight mist, dispersing only upon the sunrise, as if the morning light would reveal a music maker who would rather stay faceless — no steady blue gaze to track the progression of her fingers across the strings, nor pale mouth to hum the tune she plays… nothing but the songs, the melodies, the love of storybook heroes and their ladies, of historical knights and the favours they carry into battle.

Jon would be a fool not to know her.

He indicates a door, and Alayne — _Sansa_ , but he will not call her that just yet, not until she asks him to — nudges the door with a gentle touch.

“Only another drawing room, my lord,” she says in that practiced way of hers, and leads him inside. Jon makes sure the door clicks shut before he follows.

A writing desk, a chair, shelves of candles and books and spare pots of ink, a cushioned bench in the window, and upon the crushed purple velvet —

“Ah.” Jon retrieves the instrument from its seat. He strums calloused fingertips across the strings, which emit nothing but a slight sound of protest at his unpracticed hand.

A smile touches his lips as he offers the harp to the girl next to him. “Do you play?”

She fingers the strings, careful not to pluck out a tune lest her veil lift without her consent (of this, Jon is certain; she has been so careful with him all along).

“Bastard girls don’t learn such ladylike pursuits, my lord.”

“And bastard boys don’t become _lords_ , my lady,” Jon counters, softly as he can, but his voice remains gruff with the airs of the north. “Play for me.”

Alayne hesitates. She clasps her hands together in a gesture Jon knows so well, from another life that feels so like a dream now, and yet…

He tucks the harp beneath his arm, to free his own hands so he might coax hers apart. They’re soft — he had known it from the start, when he had brushed his lips over her knuckles that first morning, when he felt that sudden, insistent pull in his gut to never let her go — and her fingers uncurl easily at the press of his.

His heart calls to her, and she answers readily. It’s enough. Jon will not think it wrong; he has fought that battle enough times, only to die for it in the end. Now, he has found something worth living for again. If the gods remain, truly, they cannot punish him for that.

If they do… Well, at least then Jon will have made a life with her first, should she want it.

“Don’t tell my father,” Alayne says, lightly enough that it might have been a jest, but her eyes insist he heed her words.

“Of course,” Jon agrees. There are a few things he’d like to tell Petyr Baelish, but his intentions towards the man’s _daughter_ are best left for another time. He slips the harp into Alayne’s waiting hands. “It’s our secret, I promise.”

She smiles. It’s a soft, gentle thing that makes Jon recall hazy memories of cool mornings and woodsmoke and the _yip!_ of direwolf pups in the yard.

Alayne makes him _remember_ , and Jon loves her for that.

And when she plays… gods, but when those nimble fingers, those hands made to touch and create and love, hands he wants to bring him back to life, when they caress the harp strings, Jon can _feel_ it this time — he melts, and he’s in love with her all over again. He’s sure that the fall will never cease, never stop.

The song has only just begun when she closes her eyes, but Jon’s own stay fixed upon her. He reaches up to touch her face, to trace the curve of her cheekbone, and she does not shy away. She leans into his palm and her fingers keep playing.

Jon has never remembered more, in neither detail nor clarity, as he does now:

_Fresh-fallen snow. The snap of our flag, our sigil, in the winter winds. The clang of steel in the yard, a wolf’s howl, ancient prayers in the godswood. His family's voices — a curse, a laugh, the scrape of boots, a shout and a splash in the hot springs… a ballad, sung gently along with the click of knitting needles…_

“Sansa.”

Her name is a secret, spoken low and sweet, and she opens her eyes as the song comes to its close. Jon maps the shape of her lips with his thumb. He thinks that, for all he has seen, there has been nothing so wondrous as Sansa’s smile in the wake of his touch upon her.

The melody lingers in the air between them, in the breaths that pass from her tentative smile to his speechless, hopeful mouth. He swallows.

“Will you play for me again? Another night?”

_Every night._

“Whenever you wish.”

_Always._

Jon leans in — so slowly that she might turn away if she so chose — and presses a kiss, a promise, to the corner of her lips, and murmurs that wish into her skin: “Always, my love.”

Sansa — for he knows now, because she let him — clutches at his tunic to keep him close, although he has no intention of parting from her now, and she vows: “Then you shall have me, Jon, always.”

She plays for him every night thereafter.

And there comes a time — longer than Jon would have liked, but in the span of the two lifetimes it took for him to find her, it’s not so very many moons away — when she plays for their children, too.


End file.
